Freedom of Information

Information and Broadcasting Minister Priyaranjan Dasmunsi’s diatribe against media owners is not without merit. If the proposed Broadcasting Bill facilitates a discussion on the way the media function, we need to welcome it. While the ratcheting up on the supposed attack on freedom of the press in the Bill is good, even it is unfounded. […]

A company, Email Data Source Inc‘s business it to “analyze, organize, and archive thousands of daily email marketing messages” and, of course, make money by doing that. The website claims that Email Data Source’s “catalogue currently contains over 900,000 email marketing messages on 18,000 brands, sent by 14,000 companies, through more than 6,000 mailing lists”.

A headline in The Progressive reads thus: VA Nurse Investigated for â€œSeditionâ€ for Criticizing Bush. Hallelujah! It surprised me to hear a journalist-friend say that he wasn’t particularly concerned about what Yahoo!, Google or AOL do with the personal information they have of their customers as long as he gets to use what’s on offer […]

The Bill of Media Rights ostensibly concerns the media situation in the United States. But please do read the Bill. We in India too are in need of a â€œfree and vibrant mediaâ€. While for media owners the rising newspaper circulation figures are indicative of markets unexplored, it cannot be the view that the readers, […]